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This is my eighth annual annotated list of the Top 50, skipping last year because the BA provided that information then, so here again you can see who moved up and down, who was new to the list and who dropped off. So here is this year’s list again annotated with how they changed compared to last year.

Anheuser-Busch InBev; #1 nine years, no surprise

MillerCoors; ditto for #2

Pabst Brewing; ditto for #3

D. G. Yuengling and Son; Same as last year

Boston Beer Co.; Same as last year

North American Breweries; 5th year on the list, same position as last year

Sierra Nevada Brewing; Same as last year

New Belgium Brewing; Same as last year

Craft Brewers Alliance; Same as last year

Gambrinus Company; Same as last year

Lagunitas Brewing; Same as last year

Bell’s Brewery; Up 1 from #13 last year

Deschutes Brewery; Down 1 from #12 last year

Stone Brewing; Up 3 from #17 last year

Sleeman Brewing; Not in Top 50 last year

Minhas Craft Brewery; Down 1 from #15 last year

Brooklyn Brewery; Down 1 from #26 last year

Duvel Moortgat USA (Boulevard Brewing/Ommegang); Down 4 from #14 last year

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery; Up 1 from #20 last year

Matt Brewing; Down 2 from #18 last year

Harpoon Brewery; Down 2 from #19 last year

Firestone Walker Brewing; Up 1 from #23 last year

Founders Brewing; Jumped Up 12 from #35 last year

SweetWater Brewing; Up 2 from #26 last year

New Glarus Brewing; Same as last year

Alaskan Brewing; Down 2 from #24 last year

Abita Brewing; Down 5 from #22 last year

Anchor Brewing; Up 1 from #29 last year

Great Lakes Brewing; Down 2 from #27 last year

Oskar Blues Brewing; Up 3 from #33

Shipyard Brewing; Down 10 from #21 last year

Stevens Point Brewery; Up 13 from #45 last year

August Schell Brewing; Down 5 from #33 last year

Summit Brewing; Down 2 from #32 last year

Victory Brewing; Down 2 from #37 last year

Long Trail Brewing; Down 5 from #31 last year

Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits; Up 1 from #38 last year

Rogue Ales Brewery; Down 2 from #36 last year

Full Sail Brewing; Down 5 from #34 last year

Odell Brewing; Up 4 from #44 last year

Southern Tier Brewing; Down 1 from #40 last year

Ninkasi Brewing; Down 3 from #39 last year

World Brew/Winery Exchange; Down 13 from #30 last year

Flying Dog Brewery; Down 1 from #43 last year

Pittsburgh Brewing (fka Iron City); Down 2 from #47 last year

Uinta Brewing; Not in Top 50 last year

Bear Republic Brewing; Down 1 from #46 last year

Left Hand Brewing; Up 2 from #50 last year

21st Amendment Brewery; Not in Top 50 last year, though they were on the list in 2012

Allagash Brewing; Not in Top 50 last year

Not too much movement this year, except for a few small shufflings. Only four new breweries made the list; Sleeman Brewing, Uinta Brewing, 21st Amendment Brewery and Allagash Brewing.

The Brewers Association just announced the top 50 craft breweries in the U.S. based on sales, by volume, for 2014, which is listed below here. For the seventh year, they’ve also released a list of the top 50 breweries, which includes all breweries. Here is this year’s craft brewery list:

Seven breweries are new to this year’s Top 50 Craft Breweries list; Yuengling (due to a change in the definition), Breckenridge, Craftworks Restaurants & Breweries, Green Flash, Minhas Craft Brewery, Narragansett and Troeg’s. Here is this year’s press release. For the past seven years, I’ve also posted an annotated list, showing the changes in each brewery’s rank from year to year. Last year, the BA thoughtfully has already done that, saving me a lot of time and math, but they haven’t done it again this year, so I’ll have that again later today.

The Brewers Association has also just announced the top 50 breweries in the U.S. based on sales, by volume, for 2014. This includes all breweries, regardless of size or other parameters. Here is the new list:

Oskar Blues, makers of Dale’s Pale Ale and other canned beers, has announced acquisition of the Perrin Brewing Co. of Comstock Park, Michigan (near Grand Rapids). MLive is reporting the deal, and that as part of it, Keith Klopcic, who formerly worked with nearby West Side Beer Distributing, becomes the new president at Perrin Brewing Co., replacing founder and former brewery head Randy Perrin. According to the article, “financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.” I love this quote: “Other than that, it’s the same company,” said Klopcic. “Nothing changes.” Not to second guess the deal, especially since I don’t personally know the parties involved (apart from Dale Katechis from Oskar Blues), but saying nothing changes when a brewery head and (I presume) a founder leaves a company when it’s sold doesn’t strike me as a particularly honest assessment.

Dan Perrin and Jarred Sper will continue running the brewery alongside production manager and head brewer John Stewart and his team. Sper, who will be vice president of sales and marketing at Oskar Blues-owned Perrin, said the brewery is very excited by the acquisition deal.

“We at Oskar Blues love the Michigan craft beer scene and what the guys at Perrin are doing,” Katechis said. “We feel that Perrin and Oskar Blues have the same mindset toward the craft industry and this partnership will allow us to share information and innovative ideas with one another.”

In December, the breweries teamed up on a lager called “Cornlaboration” that was sold only in Michigan, a state in which Oskar Blues began distributing in 2013.

Until Oskar Blues’ canned beer sales outstripped their original brewpub, they were considered one of the country’s largest brewpubs, so it’s interesting to see them reach a point where they’re acquiring additional brands and another brewery.

Here’s an odd bit of news. The Belgian brand Leffe, owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, has traditionally made abbey beers (though that’s certainly been changing since being acquired by ABI) and the current lineup from Leffe includes a “Blond, Brown, Ruby, Tripel, Radieuse or Vieille Cuvée,” and a few others, as listed on their website.

But according to an item on Totally Beer, a source in the French-speaking part of Belgium, La Libre, is reporting that ABI is planning on launching a new IPA under the Leffe brand, to be known as “Leffe IPA.” At least one Belgian beer source doesn’t think it’s a good idea, calling it a big mistake. It certainly seems like an odd fit to launch a hoppy beer under a label known for brewing abbey-style beers, not hop forward ones, no matter how popular IPAs might be.

I made this up, but it doesn’t look right, does it?

UPDATE: It appears that ABI will not be calling the beer Leffe IPA after all. Much like the famous scene in “Pulp Fiction” about McDonald’s “Quarter-Pounder with cheese” being called the “Royale with cheese” in France, the Leffe IPA will also apparently be called the Leffe Royale. And take a look at the graphic below, taken from Beertime (though it appears it originally was printed in a catalog of some type), there will actually be three different Royales.

The graphic announcement says that the beer will have “subtle aromas” and “3 different varieties of hops” (despite listing four) but I think that’s just the first beer in the series. Curiously, it also appears to say that the Cascade hops are exclusive to Leffe, which unless I’m reading that wrong is an odd statement given that Cascade hops are the most popular hop variety used by smaller brewers. Of course, they could just be saying the beer is using Cascade hops exclusively, simply meaning it’s a single hop beer.

And this is a pretty interesting claim: “New brewing process: dry hopping.” I’m sure Britain’s brewers are howling with laughter at that one. Descriptors mentioned for the beers include “red fruits, peach, apricot, spices,” a “pronounced bitterness” and “very fruity.” So I guess the first beer is using the four listed varieties (Whitbread Golding, Cascade, Challenger and Tomahawk the second is brewed with the “Mapuche” hop variety from Argentina, and the last one Cascades. It’s possible that only the Cascade IPA is the IPA of the three, and that the others aren’t meant to be, just all more hop forward beers under the umbrella of the “Royale” series. H/T to The Beer Nut for sending me the link.

Here’s an interesting map. Vinepair has created a global chart of “The Most Popular Beer in Every Country,” based on “market share for each country” from “the most recent year available.” If they couldn’t find the data, or if there wasn’t a clear winner, they left them off the map, which is why there are some countries with no beer listed. That’s especially true in Africa and parts of Asia but, curiously, for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, too.

The preliminary numbers for 2014 are out, and the news is fairly spectacular, especially if you remember Kim Jordan’s keynote speech in New Orleans predicting and challenging the industry to set 10 percent share of the market as an attainable goal. The Brewers Association today revealed that craft beer’s share of market finally blew past 10% and is now 11% of the total beer market, by volume.

“With the total beer market up only 0.5 percent in 2014, craft brewers are key in keeping the overall industry innovative and growing. This steady growth shows that craft brewing is part of a profound shift in American beer culture—a shift that will help craft brewers achieve their ambitious goal of 20 percent market share by 2020,” said Bart Watson, chief economist, Brewers Association. “Small and independent brewers are deepening their connection to local beer lovers while continuing to create excitement and attract even more appreciators.”

But wait, there’s more.

Additionally, the number of operating breweries in the U.S. in 2014 grew 19 percent, totaling 3,464 breweries, with 3,418 considered craft broken down as follows: 1,871 microbreweries, 1,412 brewpubs and 135 regional craft breweries. Throughout the year, there were 615 new brewery openings and only 46 closings.

Combined with already existing and established breweries and brew pubs, craft brewers provided 115,469 jobs, an increase of almost 5,000 from the previous year.

“These small businesses are one of the bright spots in both our economy and culture. Craft brewers are serving their local communities, brewing up jobs and boosting tourism,” added Watson. “Craft brewers are creating high quality, differentiated beers; new brewers that match this standard will be welcomed in the market with open arms.”

Today in 1938, US Patent 2108096 A was issued, an invention of James E. Barsi, assigned to Anheuser-Busch, for his “Merchandise Display Apparatus.” There’s no Abstract, but the application states that “this invention relates to apparatus of the kind that are used for advertising and displaying merchandise and has for its main object to provide an advertising and/or display apparatus that is of attractive appearance and of such construction that, in addition to holding a plurality of samples of the advertised product in such a way that said samples may be easily handled and inspected by the public, it will also display in an attractive manner other articles or packages containing material that is particularly adapted for use in connection with the advertised product. For example, if the apparatus is intended to be used primarily to advertise a certain brand of beer, it will be equipped with a tray or equivalent part for holding a plurality of bottles or cans of beer and it will also be equipped with a shelf or equivalent part for sustaining packages of various kinds of food that are frequently served With beer, such for example, as pickles, olives, cheese, sausage, crackers, etc.”

Here’s yet another look at the changing landscape of brewery ownerships, this time from Vinepair, and while they primarily write about wine, they also must tacitly accept the well-trodden wisdom that “it takes a lot of beer to make great wine,” since they do occasionally tackle beer. Last week, the posted their “Map: The Companies Who Actually Make Your Beer.” It’s restricted to ten of the largest companies who own multiple breweries and, to their credit, it’s been updated four times so far, meaning they’re doing their best to get it right, which given its complexity, not to mention who often it’s changing, is no easy task.

Here’s some interesting news, and a nice twist or role reversal of recent events. Florian Kuplent, the talented former Anheuser-Busch brewer, in 2011 opened the Urban Chestnut Brewery in St. Louis, after A-B was acquired by InBev. I first met Florian in Denver shortly after he’d brewed an excellent German-style hefeweizen at the Fort Collins A-B brewery. Kuplent was born in Bavaria, Germany, and also was trained as a brewer at Weihenstephan.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Urban Chestnut “has acquired the Bürgerbräu Wolnzach brewery in Wolnzach, which is about 35 miles north of Munich.” That’s right, a small craft brewery has bought a German brewery. Apparently, Bürgerbräu Wolnzach closed down around six months ago, and Klupent saw an opportunity. The Post-Dispatch explains that the “St. Louis-based company plans to brew small batches of beer at the Bavarian facility in the second quarter of 2015. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.”